We were able to afford a whole house back-up generator. As long as this does not fail, power outages do not bother us. I should mention that I have several pricey pleco species I breed and it is not uncommon for me to have many $10k of fish in my tanks. It took me about 15 years and a lot of luck to reach that point. As well as the fish, we were caring for my mom who had dementia and who was entering her 90s. She could not handle a loss of power during extreme temperatures either.
In the years since we put in the generator we have had two power outages of 13 days each. The hurricanes of 2011 and 2012 came up the east coast and hit us. We are about 30 miles NNE of NYC as the crow flies. in 2019 we had one of about 3 days.
The greatest danger from power outages is not dealing with manually keeping media damp or using battery powered air pumps to keep the surface agitated for oxygen for a few hours. It is from the temps if they are near freezing or lower or heating up to 100F for any amount of time. Both of these things will kill most fish and the bacteria cannot be frozen or kept above 100F. A few hours in such conditions one can handle, an extended period is another story.
